Jonny Greenwood talks Penderecki before 48 Responses reaches Wellington

Jonny Greenwood has talked to Zoe George of RNZ ahead of the New Zealand premiere of his 48 Responses to Polymorphia, which the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra gives on Friday 10 May at Shed 6 on the Wellington waterfront. Asked about his piece sharing the programme with Haydn and Ravel, he says It's absurd, of course, but then so it is when a radio station plays Radiohead after a Beatles song.¹

The piece answers Krzysztof Penderecki's Polymorphia, which Jonny describes as ten minutes of otherworldly sound leading into one short C major chord. He set out to write 48 very short pieces, each starting on that chord and bending it a different way. There are fewer than 48 in the end, but every section still opens on the chord.

He has admired Penderecki and worked with him, and he first heard Polymorphia when a lecturer played it to his class at college, on a course that lasted five weeks before Radiohead signed to EMI, which he counts as luck. Most electronic music of the 1960s sounds of its time to him, but Polymorphia still sounds like the future. The paradox is that the ancient technology that is the string orchestra still sounds far stranger and more exotic than, say, a Moog [synthesizer].¹

He calls the orchestra the ultimate acoustic gig, and compares the whole thing to a big fireworks display, over in ten minutes. There are parts in the 48 Responses that make me cringe, others that I don't remember writing, and I like very much.¹

The orchestra played parts of his There Will Be Blood score in 2018. That was the first of his scores for Paul Thomas Anderson, and he has scored Anderson's films ever since. I find him and his films very funny. And he laughs at my stupid jokes. That's probably the main reason.¹

What he hopes for is that the audience goes on to far more orchestral concerts. His piece has a few magical moments, he says, and the orchestra's next week will have thousands.